
^ ^ ^ H . ja R A T U R 

HAUCER 



\ 




BY 



-FRED WILLIAM POLLARD 



^ 



V 



X RILADELPHIA 
B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

I9OI 



• 




^ I 



English Literature 



CHAUCER 



BY 



ALFRED WILLIAM POLLARD 



o » » e » B > J o » 



PHILADELPHIA 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1901 




.?t 



Copyright, 1901 
By J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



• • '^•J *••: : : • • 

• •• ••• •• 2 •••• 

• : : 

•• ••• • J 'J • • ♦ * 

• •••••«•!,• • » •• 



CHAUCER 



Chaucer, to whom we must now turn, used to 
be called the 'Father of English Poetry,' and 
although such epithets are rightly going out of 
fashion, if we call him the father of our modern 
poetry we shall be speaking the literal truth. 
While the works of his predecessors have only 
been brought back into notice during the nine- 
teenth century, and still are read by few except 
professed students, Chaucer's poetry has been 
read and enjoyed continuously from his own day 
to this, and the greatest of his successors, from 
Spenser and Milton to Tennyson and William 
Morris, have joined in praising it. Moreover, he 
himself deliberately made a fresh beginning in 
our literature. He disregarded altogether the old 
English tradition, and even the work written at an 
earlier period under French influence. For miracle- 
plays and romances he had a sovereign contempt, 
and, for any influence which they exerted on him, 
the writings of his fellow-countrymen, from Casd- 
mon to Langland, might never have existed. His 
masters in his art were the Frenchmen, Guillaume 
Lorris, Jean de Meung, Deguilleville, Machault ; 
the Latins, Ovid, Virgil, and Statius ; above all, the 
Italians, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The 
break between Layamon and the Old English 
writers before the Conquest is not greater than the 
break between Chaucer and his predecessors, and 
the break proceeded in each case from the same 
cause, the enlargement of the literary horizon and 
the adoption of new forms and subjects and ideas 
under foreign influence. We can see that there 
were special circumstances in Chaucer's life which 

3 



helped him to make this new departure. He was, 
as far as we know, the first notable English poet 
who was born in London, the first who was a lay- 
man, the first who was connected with the Court. 
The writers of some of the romances may have 
possessed all these qualifications, but their work 
was impersonal and never rose to poetic self- 
consciousness ; nor need we trouble to inquire if 
Minot also was a layman and a courtier. But to a 
real poet the three points were all of importance. 
With the English language still divided into widely 
different dialects the penalty of provincialism was 
crushing. To be born in London carried with it 
the use of the dialect which, in the ^now rapidly 
declining vogue of French, was fast assuming the 
position of standard English, and allowed the 
writer to appeal to the widest and best educated 
class of readers. To be a layman, and a layman 
in the king's service, was no less important. It 
meant a new standpoint, freedom from cramping 
influences, and a wider knowledge of life. For 
three centuries English poets had lived in the 
shade — a shade at first so gloomy that it crushed 
them out, and which even when it lightened must 
have numbed and depressed them. Now at last 
the gift of poetry came to an Englishman who was 
in the centre of English life, who had an audience 
ready to listen, quick to appreciate whatever he 
wrote. There is melancholy in Chaucer's early 
work, the melancholy from which hardly any true 
poet seems able to escape ; but it is no deeper than 
the clouds in April, and the sense of the warmth 
and beauty of life pervades all he wrote. His 
^ May mornings ' are, no doubt, conventional, but 
the love of the spring was in his blood, and he 
himself represents the spring-tide of our modern 
poetry. 

An interesting theory has lately been propounded 
that the name Chaucer, which is found in many 
different spellings, stands for ' Chauffecire,' or 
Chaff-wax, a chaff-wax being the officer who had 



to prepare the large wax seals then in use for 
official documents. The older explanation makes 
it equivalent to 'chaussier,' or shoemaker, and 
this is perhaps still the more probable. Whatever 
its origin, the name was not very uncommon in the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, being found 
more especially in London and in the eastern 
counties. Chaucer's grandfather and father were 
connected with both these parts, living in London 
and holding some small estate at Ipswich. The 
grandfather, Robert Chaucer, was a collector of 
customs on wine ; the father, John Chaucer, a 
vintner, who had a house in Thames Street, went 
abroad on the king's service in 1338, and ten 
years later acted as deputy to the king's butler in 
the port of Southampton. Geoffrey Chaucer was 
probably born in 1340, or a little earlier, but we first 
hear of him in April 1357, when, as fragments of 
her houshold accounts show, a pair of red and 
black breeches, a short cloak, and shoes were 
provided for him as one of the servants of the 
Lady Elizabeth, wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence. 
An entry of another payment to him shows that 
Chaucer passed the winter of 1357-58 at her seat 
at Hatfield in Yorkshire, where his future patron, 
John of Gaunt, was a visitor. In 1359 he bore 
arms for the first time, taking part in the unlucky 
campaign of that year in France, till he was made 
prisoner at ' Retters,' probably Rethel, not far from 
Rheims. In March 1360 the king contributed £16 
towards the amount required for his ransom, and 
either about this time or a little earlier Chaucer 
must have passed into his service, for we next 
hear of him in 1367, as Edward III.'s * dilectus 
valettus ' (' well-beloved yeoman '), to whom, in 
consideration of his past and future services, an 
annuity of twenty marks was granted for life. By 
this time Chaucer was married, for in 1366 (when 
she received a pension of ten marks) the name 
Philippa Chaucer appears among those of the 
ladies of the queen's bedchamber. In 1372 John 



of Gaunt granted her a pension of ^lo, and in 
1374 this same pension was regranted to Geoffrey 
and PhiHppa Chaucer for good services rendered 
by them 4o the said Duke, his consort, and his 
mother the Queen.' It is practically certain that 
this Philippa Chaucer was a daughter of Sir Payne 
Roet of Hainault, and sister of the Katherine 
Swynford who ultimately became John of Gaunt's 
third wife.^ 

Not long, probably, after 1367 Chaucer was pro- 
moted to be one of the king's esquires ; in 1369 he 
saw another campaign in France, and between 1370 
and 1379 was abroad no fewer than seven times 
in the king's service. Two of these missions 
(those of 1370 and 1376) were secret, and we 
know nothing of them except that in the second 
Chaucer was in the suite of Sir John Burley. 
In 1377 he went to Flanders with Sir Thomas 
Percy, and in this and the following year was 
twice in France in connection with negotiations 
for a peace and Richard II.'s marriage. The two 
missions still to be mentioned were the most im- 
portant of all, for both took him to Italy. In 
December 1372 Chaucer was sent to Genoa to 
arrange with its citizens as to the choice of an 
English port where they should have privileges 
as traders ; and in May or June 1378 he followed 
Sir Edward Berkeley to Lombardy, there to treat 
(' touching the King's expedition of war ') with Ber- 
nabo Visconti, Lord of Milan, and with the famous 
free-lance Sir John Hawkwood. The earlier ot 
these two Italian journeys probably only lasted a 
few months, but during it Chaucer was fortunate 
enough to meet at Padua the famous Petrarch, 

1 We hear of two sons born of this marriage — (i) Thomas Chavicer, 
who occupied the house in which his father died till his own death, 
was King's Butler, several times Speaker of the House of Commons, 
and in other ways an important person ; and (2) a much younger 
Lewis, for whom Chaucer translated a treatise on the Astrolabe. 
Elizabeth Chaucer, for whose noviciate at the Abbey of Barking 
John of Gaunt paid a large sum in 1381, was probably the poet's 
daughter. 



and to learn from him the story of Griselda which 
Petrarch had recently turned into Latin from the 
Italian of Boccaccio. Of his second mission, on 
which he was away eight months, we know no such 
pleasing incident ; but from the energy with which 
he devoted himself to poetry immediately after his 
return, and from the intimate acquaintance with 
the Itahan of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio 
which his own poems now first show, it must 
rank as one of the most important events in his 
life. 

On St George's Day 1374 Chaucer received 
from the king a grant of a pitcher of wine daily, 
which he subsequently commuted for an additional 
pension of twenty marks. In June of the same 
year he was appointed Comptroller of the Customs 
and Subsidy of Wools, Skins, &c. in the Port of 
London, with the obligation to keep the rolls of 
his office with his own hand. In 1375 he was 
made the guardian of a certain Edmund Staple- 
gate of Kent, from whom he received, for wardship 
and marriage-fee, a sum of ^104, or over ^1200 
modern value. The profits of another wardship 
granted at the same time are not known to us ; 
but in 1376 we hear of a grant by the king of 
£j\^ 4s. 6d., the price of some wool forfeited at the 
customs for not paying duty. In 1382 the con- 
trollership of the petty customs was given him in 
addition to the post he already held, and in this 
new appointment he was allowed to employ a 
deputy. It is clear that Chaucer's income during 
these years must have been very considerable ; but 
it is clear also that between his controllership at 
home and his missions abroad he was kept busily 
employed, and that until the missions ceased he 
could have had but little time for poetry. 

Of the works which Chaucer, in his references 
to his own writings, ascribes to his earliest period 
several have not come down to us. The hymns 
for Love's holy days 4hat highten Balades, 
Roundels, Virelayes ' have nearly all perished ; 



8 

the translation of Innocent III.'s treatise, De 
Miser ia Conditionis Humance (^ Of the wrecched 
engendring of mankynde,' as Chaucer calls it), 
has left its mark on a few stanzas of the ' Man 
of Law's Tale ;' the story of * Ceyx and Alcioun,' 
from Ovid, survives, in part or whole, not as a 
separate piece, but in the prologue to the Dethe 
of the Duchesse. ' Origenes upon the Maude- 
leyne' — that is, a translation of the homily on St 
Mary Magdalene wrongly attributed to Origen — 
has perished utterly ; and a ' Book of the Lion,' 
assigned to Chaucer by Lydgate, probabl'^^ a trans- 
lation of Guillaume Machault's Le Dit du Lioit^ 
has shared the same fate. Of what has become 
of Chaucer's translation of the Roman de la Rose^ 
the poem of over twenty-two thousand French 
octosyllables, begun in the previous century by 
Guillaume de Lorris, and completed by Jean de 
Meung, it 'is difficult to write with brevity. A 
translation of about one-third of the French 
original has come down to us ; but this translation 
has been shown to consist of two fragments, 
with a long gap between them, while the first 
of these fragments is again divided by linguistic 
tests into two sections, which yet read on without 
any obviously abrupt transition. The one manu- 
script which preserves these fragments does not 
give any suggestion as to who translated them ; 
the attribution to Chaucer in the earliest printed 
edition — that of 1532 — is of no value. The frag- 
mentary translation is throughout quite good 
enough to be Chaucer's ; but on the evidence 
of the linguistic tests, philologists now declare 
that, while lines 581 1-7696 are not likely to be 
by Chaucer, lines 1706-58 10 cannot possibly be 
by him, and lines 1-1705 not only may be, but 
certainly are, his work.^ 

1 The linguistic characteristics which exclude the possibility of 
Chaucerian authorship (except on some hypothesis too violent to 
be admitted) are the occurrence of northern forms in the rhymes, 
assonances instead of rhymes, and rhymes (especially of infinitives 



All that can here be said is, that by general 
consent the greater part of the extant Romatmt of 
the Rose is pronounced un-Chaucerian, and that the 
lines which have a good claim to be his come 
under some suspicion from the company in which 
they are found. 

Of the early poems by Chaucer which have come 
down to us, all exhibit a vague melancholy and 
tender grace, and several are more or less dis- 
tinctly religious. The Dethe of Blatmche the 
Duchesse^ which he wrote in 1369-70 to com- 
memorate Blanche of Castile, John of Gaunt's 
first wife, shows him strongly under the influence 
of his French -models. The central feature of 
the poem (which runs to over thirteen hundred 
lines) is the description b)^ the knight who repre- 
sents John of Gaunt of the beauty and virtue of 
the 'goode faire white' whom he had won and 
lost. This is led up to by the conventional devices 
of a dream in which the poet finds himself in a 
fair park, joins in a hunt, and then strays from 
it, and finds, seated in sorrow beneath an oak, 
the knight, whom he persuades to tell him the 
cause of his grief. Perhaps a little before, perhaps 
a little after, the Dethe of Blatmche the Diichesse^ 
Chaucer translated from the French of Guillaume 
de Deguilleville a hymn to the Blessed Virgin, in 
which the stanzas began with the different letters 
of the alphabet in their order, whence its name 
The A. B. C. Most of the stanzas open well, but 
Chaucer had not yet learnt to translate with 
freedom and ease, and few of them end as well 
as they begin. A much finer poem, the Exclama- 
cion of the Dethe of Pite^ is mostly connected with 

and French substantives in -ye — for example, * crye,' ' maladye ' — 
with adverbs in -y — for example, * trewely,' * tendrely ') of words 
and forms to which the ^-final is essential with other words or 
forms which have no claim to it. The first and second charac- 
teristics give negative evidence that poems which show them cannot 
be Chaucer's ; the third, it is claimed, goes beyond this, because no 
one save Chaucer cared for these niceties, and therefore any poem 
in which they are strictly observed must be by him. 



lO 

the Dethe of Blaiinche the Duchesse^ because its 
complaint against the cruelty of Love is thought 
to fit in well with a passage in the latter poem 
which speaks of the poet's sleeplessness and of a 
mysterious eight-year sickness, which is explained 
as referring to a hapless love-affair. It is by no 
means certain that either poem has any real 
biographical import, and the Dethe of Pite is so 
finely written that it seems rash to claim for it a 
very early date on the score of the meaning we 
read into it. With the dubious exception of an 
ingenious poem, the Coinpleynt of Mars (full of 
astronomical learning and with a possible reference 
to a Court intrigue between the Lady Isabella of 
York and Lord Huntingdon), claimed, on no very 
strong evidence, for the year 1379, we know of no 
other separate poems which Chaucer wrote during 
the 'seventies and which are now extant. It seems 
certain, however, that three or four of the Canter- 
bury Tales were written during this period, long 
before that great scheme had entered the poet's 
head, and were subsequently inserted in their place 
with more or less revision. The first of these is 
the 'Second Nun's Tale,' the ' Lyf of Saint Cecyle,' 
a weak translation from the Legenda Aurea of Jaco- 
bus de Voragine. As it stands among the Canter- 
bury Tales the narrator is still made to speak of 
herself as a so7t of Eve ; there is a reference to 
readers instead of listeners, and the feebleness 
with which the story is handled proves still more 
surely than it was written long before the earliest 
possible date at which the Tales, as a whole, can 
have been planned. With this we may reckon 
the ' Clerk's Tale ' of the Patience of Griselda, the 
story, as he tells us himself, which Chaucer heard 
from Petrarch, from whose Latin version of Boc- 
caccio's Italian it is translated ; also the ' Man of 
Law's Tale ' of the Fortitude of Constance (the Em- 
peror of Rome's daughter, so cruelly persecuted by 
her heathen mothers-in-law), translated from the 
Anglo-French chronicle of Nicholas Trivet, a Do- 



II 

minican friar who had died soon after Chaucer was 
born. Both these are well told, with passages of 
pathetic beauty, and we can trace in them the in- 
creasing freedom with which Chaucer used his poetic 
material. The last Ca7tterbury Tale for which an 
early date is claimed, the story of the tragedies of 
great men told by the sporting Monk, seems at first 
sight obviously late, for one of the stories refers to 
the death of Bernabo Visconti of Milan in 1385. 
But it is possible, without hair-splitting, to divide 
the seventeen tragedies into five written when the 
Canterbury Tales were in view, and twelve earlier 
ones ; and even when these are thrown into the scale, 
Chaucer's extant work which can be assigned to an 
earlier date than 1380 remains strikingly small in 
comparison with his splendid productiveness during 
the next ten or twelve years. 

The great quickening of Chaucer's poetic gifts 
which we can trace about 1380 must be directly 
connected with the second of his two Italian mis- 
sions, that of 1378-79. Six years before, when he 
had made his first journey to Italy, he had probably 
known very little Italian, and had very little money 
to buy books. His second mission enabled him to 
perfect himself in the language, and we cannot doubt 
that he brought home with him at least three Italian 
masterpieces, the Divina Commedia of Dante, and 
the Teseide and Filostrato of Boccaccio. At first 
he made experiments. A fragment of metrical 
essays, now called for convenience A Compleynt to 
his Lady^ is partly written in Dante's terza-rima : 
and another fragment, Anelida and Arcyte^ shows 
him beginning an ambitious rehandling of the 
Teseide^ from which seventy of its three hundred 
and fifty-seven lines are translated. His third 
manuscript proved more immediately productive, 
for (probably between 1380 and 1383) he carried 
to completion his magnificent version of the 
Filostrato^ the Troilus a7td Creseyde^ which still 
remains the finest narrative poem of its kind 
in the English language. Here for the first time 



12 

his absolute poetic mastery is apparent. He 
translates, when he chooses to translate, with ease 
and grace, and he raises the whole poem to 
a higher level, investing the faithless Creseyde 
with a piteousness which pleads for her forgiveness, 
and turning her go-between uncle. Sir Pandarus, 
whose original character has made his name a 
hateful word, into a good-natured humorous 
friend, whose easy code of morals is quite distinct 
from baseness. While at work on the Troilus^ 
Chaucer seems to have found time to translate 
a treatise of a very different kind, the De Con- 
solatione PhilosophicE of the Roman statesman 
Boethius, who wrote it in prison while awaiting 
his murder by the Emperor Theodoric in A.D. 525. 
The De Consolatione is written in alternate prose 
and verse. Chaucer rendered it all into rather 
obscure and laboured prose, but some of the 
passages which most attracted him appear after 
this date embedded in his poetry, the easy flow 
of the verse presenting a striking contrast to the 
artificiality of his prose. He was called off again 
from the Troilus in 1381 or 1382 to celebrate the 
betrothal of Richard H. to Anne of Bohemia, and 
in the Parleme7it of Foules^ with its tale of the 
mustering of the birds on St Valentine's Day, 
and their debate as to which of her suitors is 
worthiest of the beautiful ' formel-eagle,' who re- 
presented the queen, produced the brightest and 
daintiest of courtly allegories. 

When the Troilus was finished Chaucer turned 
to his Divi7ta Commedia^ and in the Hous of Fa7ite 
endeavoured to describe a journey with a heaven- 
sent guide, in which, despite its lighter vein, the 
influence of Dante is clearly discernible. When 
contrasted with the Dethe of Blau7iche the Diichesse^ 
written in the same octosyllabic couplet, the 
growth of metrical power in the Hous of Fa7)ie 
is very marked. It contains also fine passages, 
notably the description of the temple of Fame 
and of the suitors to the wayward goddess, but 



13 

Chaucer's lack of constructive genius left it a 
failure and a fragment. The golden eagle of 
Jupiter had soared with him to Fame's abode, and 
he had been shown all that there was to see ; 
but there was no possible climax to be reached, 
and for lack of a climax Chaucer left the poem 
unfinished. 

His next venture, as to which we can speak 
with certainty,^ the Legende of Good Wojnen^ 
shared the same fate. Elsewhere he refers to 
this poem as the ' Seintes Legende of Cupide,' the 
Legend of Cupid's Saints, of the fair women who 
had loved too well, and had died as Love's martyrs. 
In a prologue, of which two versions exist, both 
admirably written, he feigns that Love had threat- 
ened him with punishment for the treasons he had 
written against him in his translation of the Roman 
de la Rose^ and in Troilus and Creseydej that 
he had been saved by ^he intercession of Love's 
queen, the fair Alcestis — the heroine of Greek legend 
who died for her unworthy husband, Admetus — 
and had been bidden to write these stories of 
women's faithfulness as a palinode. There were 
to be nineteen such stories, with that of Alcestis 
herself to crown them, and the book when finished 
was to be presented to the queen (not Cupid's, 
but Richard IL's), who was no doubt intended to 
identify herself with Alcestis. Not nineteen but 
nine stories were written, the earlier ones, especi- 
ally those of Cleopatra and Dido, together with 
the prologue, being admirably told. But, as the 
Greek philosophers had long since discovered, 
while wickedness is multiform, virtue admits of 
less variation ; and as Chaucer wrote story after 
story of faithful women — Thisbe, Medea, Lucretia, 
Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis, Hypermnestra — he 
began to tire of so uniform a theme, and even 

1 It is not improbable that the rehandling of the story of Palamon 
and Arcite, from the Teseide^ which has come down to us as the 
* Knight's Tale,' was written contemporaneously with, or before, 
the Legende, 



14 

falls from tragedy into comedy by throwing out 
a hint that he was the only man to whom women 
could safely trust. In 1385 he was permitted to 
exercise his ControUership of the Customs of 
Wool by deputy, a privilege accorded from the 
first in the case of the petty customs ; and perhaps 
in this or the next year a holiday pilgrimage to 
Canterbury, made in his own person, set his 
brain throbbing with a new scheme which, in its 
variety and boundless possibilities, was in strik- 
ing contrast with that on which he was engaged. 
In any case, the Legende of Good Women was 
abandoned, and the Canterbury Tales^ the crown- 
ing work of his life, took its place. 

At this date of 1385-86, when we think of 
Chaucer as beginning to plan his Canterbury Tales^ 
he was eminently prosperous. The Tales can have 
been only just begun when misfortune befell him. 
In October 1386 he sat in Parliament as one of 
the knights of the shire for Kent, an accession of 
dignity which, by bringing him into active political 
life, probably cost him his offices. His patron, John 
of Gaunt, was out of England, and his place in 
the government was filled by the hostile Duke of 
Gloucester. A commission was appointed to in- 
quire into the state of the subsidies and customs, 
and by December new appointments show us that 
Chaucer had been superseded in both his controller- 
ships. His deputies may have played him false, 
or he himself may have been in fault, but it seems 
at least as likely that the supersession was political, 
and would not have been enforced had he not sat 
in Parliament a month before. In the second half 
of 1387 he lost his wife's pension (granted her in 
1366), either by her death or by its being com- 
muted. In May 1388 he assigned away his own 
pensions from the king, obviously in order to raise 
money, and was thus, as far as we know, left with 
nothing but the pension of £\o originally granted 
by John of Gaunt to Philippa Chaucer, but subse- 
quently regranted to both husband and wife. It 



15 

seems reasonable to believe that it was during 
these distressful times that Chaucer wrote some 
or all of the series of balades, The Former Age^ 
Fortune^ Truth^ Gentilesse^ Lak of Stedfastnesse^ 
which all owe something to the De Consolatione 
PhilosophicB of Boethius. In the Truths with its 
fine opening, ^ Flee from the press, and dwell with 
soothfastness,' we must imagine that Chaucer is 
consoling himself ; in the Fortune (the balade de 
visage sans peinture^ the 'unpainted face' of a 
faithful friend) he makes the fickle goddess herself 
plead on his behalf : 

Prynces, I prey you of your gentilesse 

Let nat this man on me thus crye and pleyne, 

And I shal quyte you your bysynesse. 

In the Lak of Stedfastnesse^ which has been 
strangely misinterpreted, and therefore misdated, 
he seems to applaud the measures which Richard II. 
took against the * merciless Parliament' when he 
declared himself of age in May 1389. According 
to a copyist (Shirley), who records several such 
traditions, this poem was sent by Chaucer ' to his 
soverain lorde kynge Rycharde the secounde, than 
being in his Castell of Windesore,' and nothing 
that we know of Chaucer makes it likely that he 
would have offered advice unless he was sure it 
would be acceptable. In any case, he speedily 
profited by the change of Ministry, being appointed 
Clerk of the King's Works in July 1389, and a 
Commissioner of the Roadway between Greenwich 
and Woolwich in 1390. But a year later he had 
lost his clerkship again, and even if he is to be 
identified with the Geoffrey Chaucer who about this 
time was made Forester of North Petherton Park 
in Somersetshire (an appointment in the gift of the 
family of his first patroness), his income must have 
seemed to him sadly small. 

It was probably during these five years (1386-91) 
of financial vicissitudes that the bulk of the 



i6 

Canterbury Tales were written. If Chaucer had 
less income he had more leisure, and he used it 
to good purpose. The idea of the Canterbury 
Pilgrimage as a framework for a series of stories 
seems to have been entirely his own. Pilgrimages 
were still immensely popular in England, and that 
to the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury the most 
popular of all. It offered a pleasant holiday in 
varied company, and with religious opportunities 
which the pilgrims could use as they pleased. The 
men and women whom Chaucer pictures as meeting 
at the Tabard Inn at South wark, the usual starting 
point for pilgrims from London and the neighbour- 
hood, were distinctly holiday folk, but they were 
religious enough to be willing to listen to a very 
long sermon as they drew near their destination. 
In his immortal Prologue Chaucer tells us all about 
them — about the brave courteous Knight, his son 
the Squire, and their sturdy Yeomen ; about the 
Lawyer and the Doctor who rode on pilgrimage, 
though the one was so busy and the other's study 
was * but little on the Bible ; ' about the dinner- 
loving Franklin, the Merchant with his thoughts 
always on his business, the pirate Shipman, the 
rascally Miller, the drunken Cook, the crafty Man- 
ciple, the crabbed Reeve, the five London burgesses, 
and the honest, kind-hearted Ploughman ; most of 
all about the ' religious ' people — the tender-hearted 
Prioress, with her lady-chaplain and priests, the 
hunting Monk, the Friar, *the best beggar in his 
house,' the Summoner and Pardoner, types of the 
very worst hangers-on of the Church ; and, to 
balance these, the good Parson and the studious 
Clerk of Oxford, with not an ounce of worldliness 
between them. All these Chaucer paints for us in 
lively colours, and then starts them on their four 
days' ride through Deptford, Greenwich, Rochester, 
and Sittingbourne, fitting them with tales of 
chivalry and romance, of noble endurance and 
low adventure, of medieval miracle and old-world 
legend and myth, a range of narrative as great as 



17 

the diversity of the tellers, and the narrative, with 
few exceptions, almost perfectly told. It was a 
great scheme worthily carried out, though not to 
completion, for instead of the hundred and twenty 
tales originally planned only twenty -four were 
written, and of these one was only just begun, 
another left incomplete, and two others more 
dramatically broken off before they were finished. 

The scheme which Harry Bailey, the host of the 
' Tabard,' proposed to his guests was that each of 
them should tell two tales on the way to Canter- 
bury and two on the return journey, and that the 
teller of the best tale should be rewarded by a 
supper at the cost of the rest. In the morning, 
when they reach the halting-place known as the 
Watering of St Thomas, lots are cast as to who 
shall tell the first tale, and the Knight, to whom 
the lot falls, responds with the story of Palamon 
and Arcyte, a splendid rendering of Boccaccio's 
Teseide. Then follow tales by two of the Churls, 
the Miller and Reeve, each seeking to discredit 
the other's craft by a knavish story, into the telling 
of which, more especially the Reeve's, Chaucer put 
all his skill. A similar tale by the Cook is placed 
next in order, but is a mere fragment ; and these 
are all Chaucer wrote for the first day's ride from 
Southwark to Deptford. 

The next day's tale-telling, after a late start (ten 
o'clock) from Deptford, begins with the old story 
of Constance (see page lo), which Chaucer, rather 
unsuitably, assigns to the Man of Law. Then the 
Shipman tells a story of a trusting husband, 
faithless wife, and roguish monk ; to which an effec- 
tive contrast is offered by the Prioress's legend, 
told with devout simplicity, of a little Christian 
chorister murdered by the Jews. The poet him- 
self is then called upon, and the * merry words' 
of Harry Bailey, the host of the ^Tabard,' who 
acted as leader of the party, may serve as a good 
example of the talks on the road with which the 
Tales are linked together : — 

2 



i8 

Whan seyd was al this miracle, every man 

As sobre was that wonder was to se, 

Til that oure Hoste japen tho bigan jest then 

And than at erst he looked upon me, then at first 

And seyde thus : ' What man artow ?' quod he ; art thou 

* Thou lookest as thou woldest fynde an hare ; 
For ever upon the ground I se thee stare. 

Approche neer, and looke up murily. 

Now war yow, sires, and lat this man have place ; beware 

He in the waast is shape as wel as I ; 

This were a popet in an arm t' embrace 

For any womman, smal and fair of face. 

He semeth elvyssh by his contenaunce, 

P'or unto no wight doth he daliaunce. 

Sey now somwhat, syn other folk have sayd ; 
Telle us a tale of myrthe, and that anon.' 

* Hoste,' quod I, 'ne beth nat yvele apayd, i 
For other tale certes kan I noon, know 
But of a rym I lerned longe agoon.' rhyme 
'Ye, that is good,' quod he, 'now shul we heere 

Som deyntee thyng, me thynketh by his cheere. ' 

(Canterbury TaleSy B. 1881-1901, Globe Ed.) 

1 Do not be ill-pleased. 

But Chaucer was far too wise really to put one of 
his dainty things into his own mouth. The rhyme 
*he lerned longe agoon' proves to be a parody 
of the old romances, the delightful 'Tale of Sir 
Thopas,' which, of course, Harry Bailey takes quite 
seriously and indignantly interrupts. Then Chaucer 
gives up poetry and tells an interminable tale of 
' Melibeus and his wife Prudence ' (translated from 
a French version of the Liber Co7tsolatio7iis of 
Albertano of Brescia, written c. 1238), which is 
heard to the bitter end. As if this were not enough, 
the Monk, instead of a hunting story, pours out the 
string of 'tragedies' which Chaucer had written 
some years before, with five new ones, and the 
Knight and Harry Bailey interrupt him most 
righteously. Unlike Chaucer, he will not make 
a second attempt, but the Nun's Priest comes to 



19 

the rescue with a bright rendering of the old folk- 
tale of the 'Fox and the Hen,' filled out in the 
poet's happiest vein. 

To the morning of the third day have been 
assigned, with no great certainty, the Doctor of 
Physic's very poor retelling of the story of 
Appius and Virginia (from the Romaii de la Rose\ 
the Pardoner's unblushing Prologue, with its reve- 
lations of the tricks of his wretched trade, and 
his story (ultimately of Indian origin) of the three 
ruffians who went out in search of Death, and found 
him by murdering each other in their eagerness 
to have possession, each for himself alone, of a 
treasure-trove of gold. It is as likely as not that 
these tales belong to the fourth day ; but to the 
third, while the pilgrims were on their way to dine 
at Sittingbourne, and thence, according to the accus- 
tomed route, to sleep at Ospringe, we can certainly 
assign five stories. Of these, the first, preceded 
by a prologue as shameless and as amusing as 
the Pardoner's, is the Wife of Bath's tale of the 
knight Avho, when he took courage to marry the 
hag who had saved his life, found her a fair 
maid. This is followed by the tales in which, 
like the Miller and Reeve, the Friar and Sum- 
moner cast stones at each other's calling ; the Sum- 
moner's Tale, though its humor is of the lowest, 
being another example of Chaucer's supreme 
skill. After a break the Clerk is furnished with a 
story by Chaucer's hunting up his old version of 
Patient Griselda, with some added stanzas ; and 
then the Merchant redresses the balance by his 
tale showing how Jove himself could not prevent a 
young wife from fooling her old husband. 

The fourth day's story-telling opens on a higher 
level with the Squire's 'half-told' romance of 
Cambuscan and the horse of brass, followed by 
the Franklin's version of a lost French story in 
which a wife is ready to sacrifice even her honour 
rather than break her word. In reading this, as 
in the stories of Constance and Griselda, we have 



20 

to remember that medieval moralists were apt to 
think of only one virtue at a time, and when this 
is understood it takes a high place among the Tales, 
Again there is a gap. Then the legend of St 
Cecilia, left in all its weakness of early work, is 
assigned to the Prioress's attendant Nun, to be 
followed by an unexpected incident, the overtaking 
of the Pilgrims by a Canon and his Yeoman, who 
have ridden hard to catch them up. The Canon 
is an alchemist, who wastes his own substance and 
that of his dupes in trying to turn silver into gold ; 
and his Yeoman, after putting his master to flight 
by his frank confessions, tells a tale of another 
rogue of the same sort. After this the Manciple 
explains (from Ovid) how a white crow's indiscreet 
revelations caused Apollo to turn all crows black ; 
and then, as Canterbury comes in sight, the 
Pilgrims bethink them of their religious duties, 
and listen to a long sermon on repentance, de- 
livered by the good Parson, who at an earlier 
stage of the journey had been very peremptorily 
given to understand that no preaching was wanted. 
Altogether the Canterbury Tales contain some 
eighteen thousand lines of verse besides the two 
prose treatises — i.e. the tale of Melibee and the 
Parson's sermon. We have no record and no sure 
grounds for conjecture as to over how many years 
their composition was spread, but except it be in 
the Doctor's tale or the Manciple's they show no 
sign of failing power ; and it is probable that they 
were written in quick succession, until loss of 
favour at Court or some other cause discouraged 
the poet, and he laid his bulky manuscript aside, 
unfinished. As we have seen, he lost his Clerkship 
of the Works in 1391 ; and if, as seems probable 
from the occurrence of the date '12 March 1391 ' 
[O.S.] in one of its calculations, he was writing the 
treatise on the Astrolabe soon after this, we may 
fairly take it as a sign that his interest in the Tales 
was already waning. In his humorous Envoy a 
Bukton^ which was written about 1396, he prays 



21 

his friend to read the 'Wife of Bath' upon the 
marriage question ; and we are left to wonder 
whether he allowed copies of the Tales in their 
incomplete form to be multiplied during his life, 
or whether it was only after his death that they 
reached a wider public than his immediate friends. 
Of other work he did but little during the last 
decade of his life. His treatise on the Astrolabe 
(an instrument for taking astronomical observa- 
tions), addressed to his little ten -year -old son 
Lewis, was left incomplete, like so much else, 
though in this case he had the treatises of the old 
Arabian astronomer Messahala, and of the York- 
shire mathematician John Holywood (Johannes 
de Sacro Bosco), on which to draw. Of poems 
of this period we have only four remaining, all 
of them short, and all apparently written with 
something less than his wonted ease. The sportive 
Envoy a Scogan^ on the vengeance he might 
expect from Venus for having 'given up' his 
lady, may belong to the year 1393, and ends with 
a pitiful request from the poor road-commissioner 
that the favoured dweller ' at the stream's head ' — 
i.e. the Court at Windsor — would ' mind his friend 
there it may fructifye.' The so-called Compleynt 
of Venus, a triple balade from the French of 
Graunson, a Savoyard knight, pensioned by Richard 
II. in 1393, may belong to the same year. The 
Envoy a Biikton, giving him his 'counseil touch- 
ing mariage,' is dated by its reference to the 
English expedition to Friesland in 1396. The 
Compleynt to his Purs, sent to the ' Conquerour 
of Brutes Albioun,' from whom it elicited a fresh 
pension, belongs, of course, to 1399. None of 
these poems are unworthy of Chaucer, and it is 
true that he never wrote his balades and short 
poems with the ease of his narrative in the couplet 
stanza, but they seem to belong to a later and less 
happy period than any of the Canterbury Tales, 
and we may reasonably conclude that the Tales, 
though the crowning work of his life, were not 
being written right up to the last. 



22 

In truth, it is to be feared that the last nine 
years of Chaucer's li/e were not very prosperous 
or happy. His friends did not desert him, for in 
1394 Richard II. granted him a new pension of 
twenty pounds a year ; but we find him frequently 
anticipating it by small loans from the Exchequer, 
and in May 1398 he obtained from the king letters 
of protection to prevent his creditors suing him. 
In October Richard granted him a tun of wine 
yearly, apparently in answer to a petition which 
begged for it as a ' work of charity ; ' and a year 
later, when Richard had been deposed, Henry IV., 
the son of Chaucer's old patron, John of Gaunt, by 
an additional pension of forty marks (^^26, 13s. 4d.), 
granted in answer to the Compleynt to his Purs, 
placed the old poet once more in comfortable 
circumstances. On the following Christmas Eve 
Chaucer took a long lease, for fifty-three years, 
of a house in the garden of St Mary's Chapel, 
Westminster, which his son, Thomas Chaucer, 
the King's Butler, continued to occupy after his 
death ; and there are records of his drawing in- 

• stalments of his pensions in February and June of 
1400. The June payment was received on his 
behalf by a friend, which may or may not, point 
to his already being ill. All that we know is that, 
according to an inscription on a tomb erected to 
him by a lover of his works in 1556, he died on 
25th October 1400, and that he was buried in St 
Benet's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, the first of 
the many poets who have found their last resting- 
place in what we now know as Poet's Corner. 

/ In estimating Chaucer's position among EngHsh 
poets we have to consider his work in relation 
to that of his predecessors and contemporaries, 
and, secondly, the extent of his actual achieve- 
ment. On the first point something has already 
been said ; but the most important difference which 
separates Chaucer from the poets whose work we 
have already reviewed is that he first of English 
writers whose names we know (the limitation is in- 



23 

troduced to exclude the author of Pearly a possible 
exception) conceived of poetry as an art. Our 
earlier poets, whose subjects would often have been 
as fitly treated in prose, wrote * straight on,' with 
very little ornament, and very little care for find- 
ing the right word or varying their verse. Their 
modesty saved them from many mistakes, and 
though their work is always on a level, it is by no 
means on a dead level. But any one who will read, 
say, the Cursor Mundi from end to end and not 
find it tedious must have a special taste for old- 
world things. Even Langland, who was continu- 
ally recasting his Vision^ recast it not so much that 
he might improve what he had already said, but 
that he might say something different ; and, as we 
have noted, he as often changed a good line for a 
worse as a poor line for a better. In Chaucer's 
poetry, on the other hand, we find a continuous 
development, and evidence of the hard work and 
enterprise by which that development was attained. 
He begins as a mere translator, and becomes, in 
his own way, one of the most individual of poets ; 
he begins with monotonous verse, full of padding, 
and attains a metrical freedom as complete as 
Shakespeare's ; he begins in the prevalent fashion, 
and soon enriches English literature with two new 
metres of capital importance (the seven-hne stanza 
and decasyllabic couplet), and with a new range 
of subjects. Though he had to work harder for 
his living than most of his predecessors, he took 
his art far more seriously, and starting at a happier 
moment and with greater natural gifts, he attained 
results which differ from theirs not merely in degree 
but in kind. 

As regards his positive achievement some large 
admissions must be made. The pretty little songs 
in the Dethe of the Duchesse and the Parlement 
of Foules do not entitle us to claim for him any 
serious lyrical gift, and his shorter poems generally 
are known rather by fine single lines than as 
successful wholes. With the absence of the lyrical 



24 

faculty goes the absence of passion and depth of 
thought. The true tragic note is not sounded once 
in all his poems, and his portrayal of love is 
languishing and sensuous, never strong. Three of 
his women are perfectly drawn : the fashionable 
Prioress, the triumphantly vulgar Wife of Bath, as 
sketches ; the small-souled, piteous Cressida as a 
finished portrait. The rest are personifications or 
conventional types, quickened now and again by 
some happy touch, but not possessed of flesh and 
blood. As for his asserted deep religious feelings, 
there has certainly been much exaggeration. He 
was interested in the problems of free-will and 
predestination ; he had the man of the world's 
admiration for practical piety wherever he saw it ; 
he had his religious moments, and towards the end 
of his life may have been devout ; but the humor- 
ous lines in ' The Knightes Tale ' — 

His spirit chaunged hous and wente ther, 
As I cam never, I kan nat tellen wher : 
Therfore I stynte, I nam no divinistre 
Of soules fynde I nat in this registre, 

are typical of his spirit in the heyday of his 
powers ; and though he laid bare the worldliness 
and knavery of the hangers-on of religion, they fill 
him with no deep repugnance. 

Lastly, it must be owned that Chaucer had little 
or no constructive power. He could fill in other 
men's outlines and improve other men's work as 
triumphantly as Shakespeare himself, but the in- 
conclusiveness of the Dethe of the Duchesse and 
the Parlement of Foules, and the unfinished con- 
dition of every other poem in which he tried to 
work on his own lines as regards plot, prove that 
he had no aptitude for inventing a story and de- 
veloping it from prelude to climax. 

When all these admissions have been made, 
Chaucer yet remains one of the greatest English 
poets, because in his own art of narrative verse 
he attained a mastery which has never been ap- 



25 

preached. Where he should be ranked, as com- 
pared with Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Shelley, or 
Tennyson, depends entirely on the value the critic 
attaches to different kinds of excellence. In his 
own Chaucer stands first. While his predecessors 
lack readers because they had too little art, later 
writers have- often failed, because they have tried 
to introduce too much. In Chaucer alone we find 
narrative in perfection — simple, direct, fluent, vary- 
ing easily with the subject, full of his own individu- 
ality, everywhere controlled and enlivened by his 
abounding humour, and written in verse of never- 
failing music and metrical power. He is a great 
artist, with an artist's self-consciousness ; at the 
same time he is a'bsolutely natural and at his ease. 
There are few English poets to whom we should 
attribute the combination of these qualities ; there 
is no other who has combined them to the same 
extent. 

A narrative poet can never receive justice from 
quotations, but the extracts which follow are chosen 
to illustrate as far as is possible in a few pages the 
-variety of Chaucer's verse and his happiness in 
dealing with different subjects. We take him first 
in his early days as the pensive, rather sentimen- 
tal young poet, weaving his own sorrows, real or 
imagined, into his lament for the wife of his patron, 
John of Gaunt,^ of which our quotation forms the 
opening lines : 



1 This and the following quotations are taken from the ' Globe' 
Chaucer, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer^ edited by A. W. 
Pollard, H. F. Heath, Mark H. Liddell, W. S. McCormick 
(Macmillans, 1898). The Canterbury Tales were printed by 
Caxton in 1478 and 1483, and reprinted b}'^ Pynson (c. 1492) and 
Wynkyn de Worde (1498). Caxton also printed the Parlement 0/ 
Foules and some of the minor poems about 1478, and the Troilus 
about 1483, this being printed again by Wynkyn de Worde in 1517. 
In 1526 Pynson printed most of Chaucer's works in a volume in three 
parts, but the first collected edition was that printed by Godfray in 
1532, and edited by Thynne. This was reprinted in 1542 and 1550, 
and again (with additions supplied by the antiquary John Stowe)!in 
561. In 1598 and 1602 editions appeared edited by Thomas Speght, 
and others were issued in 1687 and 1721, the latter edited by Urr>'. 



26 

I have gret wonder, by this lyghte, 
How that I lyve, for day ne nyghte 
I may slepe wel neigh noght ; 
I have so many an ydel thoght, 
Purely for defaute of slepe, 

That, by my trouthe, I take no kepe heed 

Of no thyng how hit cometh or gooth, it— goes 

Ne me nis no thyng leef nor looth. is not— dear nor hateful 
Al is y-liche good to me, — alike 

Joye or sorwe, wherso hit be, — 
For I have felyng in no thyng, 

But as it were, a mased thyng dazed 

Alway in poynt to falle a-doun ; 
For sorwful ymagynacioun 

Is alway hoolly in my mynde. wholly 

And wel ye woot agaynes kynde against nature 

Hit were to liven in this wyse. 
For Nature wolde nat suffyse 
To noon erthly creature 
Not long tyme to endure 
Withoute slepe, and been in sorwe ; 
And I ne may, no nyght ne morwe, 
Slepe ; and this melancolye 
And drede I have for to dye, 
Defaute of slepe and hevynesse. 



These collected editions contained many works not by Chaucer, 
and their text was disfigured by every possible blunder, so that 
the music of Chaucer's verse was entirely lost and his meaning 
obscured. A beginning of better things was made by Thomas 
Tyrwhitt's edition of the Canterbury Tales (1775-78), a really fine 
piece of editing for its date. Thomas Wright's edition for the Percy 
Society (1842), and that of Richard Morris in Bell's Aldine Classics 
(1866), both of them founded on Harleian MS. 7334, were further 
improvements. But no accurate text was possible until Dr Furnivall 
founded the Chaucer Society in 1866, and printed parallel texts 
from all the best manuscripts that could be found, including the Elles- 
mere, which is now generally considered the best. From these texts 
Professor Skeat in 1894 edited for the Clarendon Press The Co>n- 
plete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer^ in six volumes, with a wealth of 
illustrative notes ; and the ' Globe' edition of 1898 was based on the 
same materials. In addition to its work on Chaucer's text, the 
Chaucer Society has cleared up the sources of many of his poems, 
and has settled the true order of the Canterbury Tales, the letters 
A-I which appear in references to line-numbers denoting the 
different groups under which, in their incomplete condition, it is 
necessary to arrange them. 



27 

Hath sleyn my spirit of quyknesse 
That I have lost al lustihede. 
Suche fantasyes been in myn hede 
To I noot what is best to do. know not 

But men myghte axe me why so ask 

I may not slepe, and what me is ? what is wrong with me 
But natheless, who aske this nevertheless 

Leseth his asking trewely. Loses 

My selven can not telle why 
The sothe ; but trewely, as I gesse, 
I holde hit ben a siknesse to be 

That I have suffred this eight yere, 
And yet my boote is never the nere ; cure— nearer 

For ther is phisicien but oon 
That may me hele ; but that is doon. 
Passe we over until eft; after 

That wil not be, moot nede be left. must needs 

{Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse, 11. 1-42.) 

The gentle melancholy of this prelude finds a 
inore sonorous echo in the Compleynt of the Dethe 
of Pitee^ from which also we may quote the opening 
lines : 

Pite that I have sought so yore ago 
With herte sore and ful of besy peyne, 
That in this worlde was never wight so wo 
With-oute dethe ; and if I shal not feyne, ^. 
My purpos was to Pite to compleyne 
Upon the crueltee and tirannye 
Of Love, that for my trouthe doth me dye. 

And when that I, by lengthe of certeyn yeres, 
Had evere in oon a tyme sought to speke, alike 

To Pite ran I, al bespreynt with teres, sprinkled 

To preyen hir on Crueltee me a-wreke ; avenge 

But er I myght with any worde out-breke, 
Or tellen any of my peynes smerte, 
I fond hir deed and buried in an herte. found her dead 

Adoun fel I when that I saugh the herse, 
Deed as a stoon, whyl that the swogh me laste ; swoon 
But up I roos with colour ful dyverse. 
And pitously on hir myn eyen I caste, 
And ner the corps I gan to presen faste, i. 2 

And for the soule I shoop me for to preye ; 3 

I nas but lorne, ther was no more to sey. was utterly lost 



28 

Thus am I slayn sith that Pite is deed ; 
Alias the day ! that ever hit shulde falle ! 
What maner man dar now holde up his heed ? 
To whom shal any sorwful herte calle ? 
Now Crueltee hath cast to sleen us alle, 
In ydel hope, folk redelees of peyne, — 4 

Sith she is deed, to whom shul we compleyne ? 

{Compleynt of the Dethe of PiteCy 11. 1-28.) 
1 Nearer. 2 Began to press. ^ Addressed myself. * Bewildered 
from suffering. 

To illustrate Chaucer's earlier narrative work, we 
must be content with three stanzas from the ^ Tale 
of Constance.' They strike that note of pathos and 
pity which with Chaucer takes the place of deeper 
tragedy. King Alia had married Constance after 
the miracle which proved her innocent of a murder 
of which sjie had been falsely accused ; but now, 
in his absence from home, he has been beguiled, 
and sends an order that both she and his little 
child are to be thrust out to sea in a rudderless 
boat in three days' time : 

Wepen bothe yonge and olde in al that place 
Whan that the kyng this cursed lettre sente, 
And Custance, with a deedly pale face. 
The ferthe day toward the ship she wente ; fourth 

But nathelees she taketh in good entente 
The wyl of Crist, and knelynge on the stronde, 
She seyde, * Lord, ay welcome be thy sonde ; sending 
He that me kepte fro the false blame. 
While I was on the lond amonges yow. 
He kan me kepe from harm, and eek fro shame, 
In salte see, al-thogh I se noght how. 
As strong as ever he was he is yet now. 
In hym triste I, and in his mooder deere, — 
That is to me my seyl, and eek my steere.' sail— rudder 
Hir litel child lay wepyng in hir arm, 
And knelynge, pitously to hym she seyde, 
* Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee noon harm ! ' 
With that hir coverchief of hir heed she breyde, i 
And over his litel eyen she it leyde. 
And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste, 
And into hevene hir eyen up she caste. 

(• Man of Lawes Tale,' Canterbury Tales, B. 820-840.) 
1 She tore the kerchief from her head. 



29 

From all this tenderness we must pass rapidly 
to the tales of chivalry and romance, full of vivid 
colour, the brightness of youth, and joy of love, 
which are the most prominent feature in Chaucer's 
second period. Among these Troilus and Cressida 
stands supreme ; and we may take from it first this 
picture of Criseyde when Troilus first sees her, and 
is suddenly struck down, amid his mockery of love, 
by the beauty he despised : 

Among thise othre folk was Criseyda 

In widwes habit blak ; but natheles, widows 

Right as our firste lettre is now an A, 

In beaute first so stood she makeles : matchless 

Her goodly loking gladed al the prees ; crowd 

N'as nevere seyn thing to ben praysed derre, 



X, 2 



Nor under cloude blak so bright a sterre, star 

As was Criseyde, as folk seyde everychone 
That her behelden in her blake wede. 
And yit she stood ful lowe and stille alone 
Behinden othre folk in litel brede breadth 

And nigh the dore, ay under shames drede, 3 

Simple of atir and debonaire of chere, , attire 

With ful assured loking and manere. 

This Troilus, as he was wont to gide 

His yonge knightes, ladde hem up and doun 

In th'ilke large temple on every side, that same 

Biholding ay the ladies of the toun, 

Now here, now there ; for no devocioun 

Hadde he to non, to reven him his reste, deprive 

But gan to preyse and lakken whom him leste. disparage 

And in his walk ful faste he gan to wayten watch 

If knight or squier of his companye 

Gan for to sike or lete his yen bayten sigh— feed 

On any woman that he coude espye : 

He wolde smile and holden it folye, 

And seye him thus, * God wot, she slepeth softe 

For love of thee, whan thou tornest ful ofte ! 

/ 1 have herd told, pardieux, of your livfnge, 

Ye lovers, and your lewed observaunces, 4 

And which a labour folk han in winninge 



30 

Of love, and in the keping which doutaunces ; 
And whan your preye is lost, wo and penaunces ! 

verray fooles, nyce and blynd ben ye ! foolish 
Ther n'is nat oon can war by other be ! ' beware 

And with that word he gan caste up the browe 

Ascaunces, * Lo ! is this nat v/isly spoken ? ' 

At which the God of Love gan loken rowe roughly 

Right for despit, and shop for to ben wroken : 5 

He kidde anon his bowe n'as nat broken ! showed 

For sodeinly he hitte him at the fuUe ; 

And yit as proud a pecok can he puUe ! pluck 

{Troilus and Cressida^ Bk. i. 11. 169-210.) 

1 There was not. 2 More dearly. ^\n dread of being shamed 
(she was daughter of the Greek Calchas). ^ Common, foolish. 
^ Prepared himself to be avenged. 

Cupid made Troilus pay heavily for his gibes, 
and cheated him at the last ; yet he allowed him a 
little spell of happiness ; and here is Chaucer's de- 
scription of the supreme moment of love's reward : 

O, soth is seid, that heled for to be 
As of a fevere, or other gret siknesse. 
Men moste drinke, as men may alday see, 
Ful bittre drinke ; and for to han gladnesse. 
Men drinken ofte peyne and gret distresse : 

1 mene it here, as for this aventure 

That thorugh a peyne hath founden al his cure. 

And now swetnesse semeth more swete 

That bitternesse assayed was biforn ; 

For out of wo in blisse now they flete ; float 

Non swich they felten sin they were born. since 

Now is this bet than bothe two be lorn ! better 

For love of God, take every womman hede 

To werken thus, whan it com'th to the nede ! 

Criseyde, al quit from every drede and tene, sorrow 

As she that juste cause had him to triste, trust 

Made him swich feste, it joye was to sene. 

Whan she his trouthe and clene entente wiste ; 

And as aboute a tree with many a twiste 

Bitrent and wryth the swote wodebinde, i 

Gan ech of hem in armes other winde. 



31 

And as the newe abaysed nightingale abashed 

That stinteth first whan she biginneth singe, stops 
Whan that she hereth any herde tale, herdsman talk 
Or in the hegges any wight steringe, hedges— stirring 
And after siker doth her vois out-ringe ; in sure tones 
Right so Criseyda, whan her drede stente, ceased 

Opned her herte, and tolde al her entente. 

And right as he that saw his deth y-shapen, 

And deyen moste, in aught that he may gesse, must 

And sodeinly rescous doth him escapen, 2 

And from his deth is brought in sikernesse ; safety 

For al this world, in swich present gladnesse 

Is Troilus, and hath his lady swete. — 

With worse hap God lat us nevere mete ! 

{Troilus and Cressida, Bk. iii. 11. 1212-1246.) 
1 Betwines and wreathes the sweet honeysuckle. 2 ^\ rescue 
causes him to escape. 

In the end, as we all know, Criseyde failed to 
fight against the stress of circumstance and was 
faithless ; and Chaucer, as he tells of the death of 
Troilus, takes, for the moment, a higher strain : 

Swich fyn hath tho this Troilus for love ! Such end 

Swich fyn hath al his grete wor thin esse ! 

Swich fyn hath his estat real above ! royal 

Swich fyn his lust, swich fyn hath his noblesse ! 

Swich f}Ti, this false worldes brotelnesse ! — brittleness 

And thus bigan his loving of Criseyde 

As I have told, and in this wise he deyde. 

— O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she, 

In whiche ay love up-groweth with your age, 

Repeireth hom fro worldly vanite ! 

And of your herte up-casteth the visage 

To th'ilke God that after his image 

You made ; and thinketh al n'is but a faire 

This world, that passeth sone as floures faire ! 

And loveth Him, the whiche that right for love 

Upon a cros, our soules for to beye, buy, redeem 

First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene above ; i, 2 

For He n'il falsen no wight, dar I seye, 

That wol his herte al hoolly on him leye ! 

And sin He best to love is, and most meke, since 

What nedeth feyned loves for to seke ? 

{Troilus and Cressida, Bk. v. 11. 1828-1848.) 
iDied. 2Sitteth. 



32 

The Troilus^ which has this solemn end, is a 
* tragedy,' but it is a tragedy as full of light as 
of shade ; in it we first find Chaucer's humour in 
its perfection, and to suit this humour he attunes 
his verse to another key with masterly ease. Here 
is a passage from an earlier part of the poem 
describing a call paid (in the interest of Troilus) 
by Sir Pandarus on his niece, then in the stage 
of widowhood in which thoughts of consolation 
may be trifled with : 

Whan he was come unto his neces place, 

* Wher is my lady ?' to her folk quod he ; 

And they him tolde, and he forth in gan pace, passed 
And fond two othre ladies sete and she seated 

Withinne a paved parlour ; and they three 
Herden a mayden red en hem the geste story 

Of al the sege of Thebes, whil hem leste. 

Quod Pandarus, * Madame, God you see. 
With al your book and al the companye ! ' — 

* Ey, uncle, now welcome y-wis ! ' quod she ; surely 
And up she ros, and by the hond in hye hastily 
She took him faste, and seyde, ' This night thrye — thrice 
To goode mote it torne ! — of you I mette.' dreamt 
And with that word she doun on bench him sette. 

* Ye, nece, ye shal fare wel the bet, better 
If God wile, al this yer ! ' quod Pandarus ; will 

* But I am sory that I have you let hindered 
To herken of your book ye preisen thus. 

For Goddes love, what seith it ? Tel it us ! 

Is it of love ? O, som good ye me lere ! ' teach 

* Uncle ! ' quod she, * your maistresse is not here ! ' 

With that they gonnen laughe ; and tho she seyde, 

* This romaunce is of Thebes, that we rede ; 
And we han herd how that King Laius deyde 
Thorugh Edippus his sone, and all that dede ; 

And here we stinten at thise lettres rede, i, 2 

How that the bisshop, as the book can telle, 
Amphiorax, fil thorugh the grounde to helle.' 

Quod Pandarus, * Al this knowe I my-selve. 
And al th' assege of Thebes, and the care ; 
For herof ben ther maked bookes twelve. 
But lat be this, and tel me how ye fare. 



33 

Do wey your barbe, and shewe your face bare. 3 

Do wey your book : ris up, and lat us daunce, 
And lat us don to May som observaunce ! ' 

* Ey, God forbede ! ' quod she, * Be ye mad ? 

Is that a widwes lif, so God you save ? 

By God, ye maken me right sore adrad ! afraid 

Ye ben so wilde, it semeth as ye rave ! 

It sate me wel bet, ay in a cave would be fit 

To bidde and rede on holy seintes lives ! pray 

Lat maydens gon to daunce, and yonge wives !' 

{Troilus and Cressida^ Bk. ii. 11. 78-119.) 

1 Stop. 2 The chapter-heading written in red letters in a manu- 
script. 3 A collar partly hiding the face. 

The absolute ease of this passage is in striking 
contrast to Chaucer's early use of the stanza in the 
story of St Cecyle, and has perhaps never been 
equalled in the same form save by Byron. To 
accompany these quotations from the Troiliis^ we 
may take the ' Knightes Tale ' out of its place in the 
Ca7tterbury series, in order to show how Chaucer 
treats chivalry under arms, as in the Troilus he 
treats of chivalry in love. The cousins Palamon 
and Arcite both love the fair Emily, sister to their 
enemy, Theseus, ' Duke ' of Athens. Arcite over- 
hears Palamon speaking of his love when in hiding 
from Theseus, and, as his cousin is weaponless, 
rides off to fetch him armour and weapons that 
they may fight out their quarrel. The quotation 
describes how they arm each other and then fight 
furiously till Theseus interrupts them. It is the 
more noteworthy because, while Chaucer is trans- 
lating the Teseide of Boccaccio, all the vivid and 
dramatic touches are his own : 

Arcite is riden anon unto the toun, 
And on the morwe, er it were dayes light, 
Ful prively two harneys hath he dight, t, 2 

Bothe suffisaunt and mete to darreyne fight out 

The bataille in the feeld betwix hem tweyne ; 
And on his hors, allone as he was born, 
He carieth al the harneys hym biforn : 

3 



34 

And in the grove, at tyme and place y-set, appointed 

This Arcite and this Palamon ben met. 

To chaungen gan the colour in hir face, 

Right as the hunters, in the regne of Trace, 3 

That stondeth at the gappe with a spere. 

Whan hunted is the leoun or the here. 

And hereth hym come russhyng in the greves, groves 

And breketh both bowes and the leves. 

And thynketh, ' Heere cometh my mortal enemy, 

With-oute faile he moot be deed or I ; must be dead 

For outher I moot sleen hym at the gappe, either 

Or he moot sleen me, if that me myshappe ' : 

So ferden they in chaungyng of hir hewe, 4, 5 

As fer as everich of hem oother knewe, 

Ther nas no * Good day,' ne no saluyng, 
But streight, withouten word or rehersyng, 
Everich of hem heelpe for to armen oother. 
As frendly as he were his owene brother ; 
And after that, with sharpe speres stronge. 
They foynen ech at other wonder longe. fence 

Thou myghtest wene that this Palamoun, 
In his fightyng were a wood leoun, mad 

And as a cruel tigre was Arcite : 
As wilde bores gonne they to smyte. 
That frothen whit as foom for ire wood, — . mad anger 
Up to the ancle foghte they in hir blood. their 

And in this wise I lete hem fightyng dwelle. 
And forth I wole of Theseus yow telle. 

Cleer was the day, as I have toold er this, 
And Theseus, with alle joye and blis. 
With his Ypolita, the faire queene. 
And Emelye, clothed al in grene, 
On huntyng be they riden roially ; 
And to the grove, that stood ful faste by. 
In which ther was an hert, as men hym tolde. 
Due Theseus the streighte way hath holde ; 
And to the launde he rideth hym ful right, — open space 
For thider was the hert wont have his flight, — 
And over a brook, and so forth in his weye. 
The Due wol han a cours at hym, or tweye. 
With houndes, swiche as that hym list commaunde. 

And whan the Due was come unto the launde 
Under the sonne he looketh, and anon 



35 

He was war of Arcite and Palamon 

That foughten breme, as it were bores two. furiously 

The brighte swerdes wenten to and fro 

So hidously, that with the leeste strook 

It semed as it wolde fille an ook ; fell 

But what they were no thyng he ne woot. 

This due his courser with his spores smoot, 

And at a stert he was bitwix hem two, 

And pulled out a swerd, and cride, ' Hoo ! 

Namoore, up peyne of lesynge of youre heed ! upon 

By myghty Mars, he shal anon be deed 

That smyteth any strook, that I may seen. 

But telleth me what mystiers men ye been, what kind of 

That been so hardy for to fighten heere 

Withouten juge, or oother officere, 

As it were in a lystes roially ?' 

(' Knightes Tale,' Canterbury Tales ^ A. 11. 1 628-1662, 
1683-1713.) 

1 Suits of armour. 2 Qot ready. ^ Kingdom of Thrace. ^ Be- 
haved. ^ Their colour. 

After the Troilus came the Hous of Fame^ and 
from this, did space permit, we should quote 
Chaucer's autobiographical colloquy with the 
Golden Eagle, and some of the prayers of Fame's 
suitors and their answers. But we must hasten to 
the Legende of Good Woinen^ and choose from this 
a characteristic passage on Chaucer's favourite 
season, Spring, not unlike that at the end of 
the Parletnent of Foules^ but written with more 
freedom : 

Forgeten had the erthe his pore estate 

Of wyntir, that him naked made and mate, forlorn 

And with his swerd of colde so sore greved ; 

Now hath the atempre sonne al that releved temperate 

That naked was, and clad it new agayne. 

The smale foules, of the sesoun fayne. 

That of the panter and the nette ben scaped, a bag-net 

Upon the foweler, that hem made a-whaped scared 

In wynter, and distroyed hadde hire broode. 

In his dispite hem thoghte it did hem goode 

To synge of hym, and in hir songe dispise 

The foule cherle, that, for his coveytise. 



36 

Had hem betrayed with his sophistrye. 

This was hir songe, * The foweler we deffye, 
And al his crafte.' And some songen clere 
Layes of love, that joye it was to here, 
In worshipynge and in preysing of hir make ; mate 

And, for the newe bUsful somers sake, 
Upon the braunches ful of blosmes softe. 
In hire delyt, they turned hem ful ofte. 
And songen, ' Blessed be Seynt Valentyne ! 
For on his day I chees you to be myne, 
Withouten repentyng myne herte swete ! ' 
And therewithal hire bekes gonnen meete, 
Yeldyng honour and humble obeysaunces 
To love, and diden hire othere observaunces 
That longeth onto love, and to nature ; 
Construeth that as yow lyst, I do no cure. 

And tho that hadde don unkyndenesse, — 
As doth the tydif, for newfangelnesse, — 
Besoghte mercy of hir trespassynge. 
And humblely songen hir repentynge, 
And sworen on the blosmes to be trewe, 
So that hire makes wolde upon hem rewe, 
And at the laste maden hir acorde. 

i_Legende of Good Women, 11. 125-159.) 

All the Prologue to the Legende^ whence this 
is taken, is in Chaucer's happiest vein, both in its 
earlier and in this later form ; and as in the last 
quotation it was hard to have to stop before 
Theseus' speech in which he first condemns and 
then chaffs the lovers, so here it would be pleasant 
to quote all the talk with Cupid and Alcestis which 
follows on our extract. From the legends them- 
selves we can only take these few lines as an 
example of how vigorously Chaucer could describe 
a sea-fight of the ancient kind : 

Antonius was war, and wol nat fayle aware 
To meten with thise Romaynes, if he may. 

Took eke his rede, and both upon a day, counsel 

His wyf and he, and al his ost, forthe wente host 

To shippe anon, no lenger they ne stente, stayed 

And in the see hit happed hem to mete. i 
Up goth the trumpe, and for to shoute and shete, shoot 



37 

And paynen hem to sette on with the sonne ; 2 

With grisly soune out goth the grete gonne, 

And heterly they hurtelen al at ones, furiously 

And fro the top doun cometh the grete stones. 

In gooth the grapenel so ful of crokes, 

Amonge the ropes, and the sheryng hokes ; 

In with the polax preseth he and he ; this one and that 

Byhynde the maste begyneth he to fle, 

And out agayn, and dryveth hem over horde ; 

He stynteth hem upon his speres orde ; 3 

He rent the sayle with hokes lyke a sithe ; rendeth 

He bryngeth the cuppe, and biddeth hem be blithe ; 

He poureth pesen upon the hacches slidre ; 4 

With pottes ful of lyme, they goon togidre ; 

And thus the longe day in fight they spende, 

Til at the last, as' every thing hath ende, 

Antony is shent, and put hym to the flyghte ; discomfited 

And al his folke to-go, that best go myghte. 

{Leg-ende of Good Wovien, 11. 629-653.) 

1 That is, Antony and Octavian. 2 That is, so that the sun might 
be in the enemy's face. ^ Stops them on his spear's-end. ■* Dried 
peas, to prevent the enemy getting a firm footing. 

We come now to the Canterbury Tales^ and as 
from the portrait-gallery of the Prologue we can 
only take two examples, two have been chosen 
which show in effective contrast the good and bad 
sides of religion in Chaucer's day. Here is the 
good Parson : 

A good man was ther of religioun, 
And was a PoURE Persoun of a Toun ; 
But riche he was of hooly thoght and werk ; 
He was also a lerned man, a clerk, 
That Cristes Gospel trewely wolde preche : 
His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche. 
Benygne he was, and wonder diligent, 
And in adversitee ful pacient ; 

And swich he was y-preved ofte sithes. times 

Ful looth were hym to cursen for his tithes, 
But rather wolde he yeven, out of doute, give 

Unto his poure parisshens aboute, 
Of his offrying and eek of his substaunce : 
He koude in litel thyng have suffisaunce. 
Wyd was his parisshe, and houses fer asonder, 



38 

But he ne lafte nat, for reyn ne thonder. 

In siknesse nor in meschief to visite 

The ferreste in his parisshe, much and lite, rich and poor 

Upon his feet, and in his hand a staf. 

This noble ensample to his sheepe he yaf gave 

That firste he wroghte and afterward he taughte. 

Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte, those 

And this figure he added eek therto. 

That if gold ruste what shal iren doo ? 

For if a preest be foul, on whom we truste, 

No wonder is a lewed man to ruste ; 

And shame it is, if a prest take keepe, heed 

A shiten shepherde and a clene sheepe. 

Wei oghte a preest ensample for to yive 

By his clennesse how that his sheepe sholde lyve. 

He sette nat his benefice to hyre 

And leet his sheepe encombred in the myre, left 

And ran to Londoun, unto Seint Poules, 

To seken hym a chaunterie for soules ; 

Or with a bretherhed to been withholde, i 

But dwelte at hoom and kepte wel his folde. 

So that the wolf ne made it nat myscarie, — 

He was a shepherde, and noght a mercenarie : 

And though he holy were and vertuous. 

He was to synful man nat despitous, 

Ne of his speche daungerous ne digne, difficult nor haughty 

But in his techyng discreet and benygne. 

To drawen folk to hevene by fairnesse, 

By good ensample, this was his bisynesse : 

But it were any persone obstinat. 

What so he were, of heigh or lough estat, 

Hym wolde he snybben sharply for the nonys. reprove 

A bettre preest I trowe that nowher noon ys ; 

He waited after no pompe and reverence, 

Ne maked him a spiced conscience. 

But Cristes loore, and his Apostles twelve, 

He taughte, but first he folwed it hym selve. 

{Canterbury Tales^ Prologue, 11. 477-528.) 

1 To lodge in a monastery. 

And here the rogue of a Pardoner : 

With hym ther rood a gentil Pardoner i 

Of Rouncivale, his freend and his compeer, 
That streight was comen fro the court of Rome. 



39 

Ful loude he soong Com hider, love, to me I 
This Somonour bar to hym a stif burdoun, accompaniment 
Was never trompe of half so greet a soun. 
This Pardoner hadde heer as yelow as wex hair 

But smothe it heng as doth a strike of flex ; hank of flax 
By ounces henge his lokkes that he hadde, In small pieces 
And therwith he his shuldres overspradde. 
But thynne it lay by colpons oon and oon ; 2 

But hood, for jolitee, ne wered he noon. 
For it was trussed up in his walet. 
Hym thoughte he rood al of the newe jet ; fashion 

Dischevelee, save his cappe, he rood al bare. 3 

Swiche glarynge eyen hadde he as an hare, 
A vernycle hadde he sowed upon his cappe ; 4 

His walet lay biforn hym in his lappe 
Bret-ful of pardon, come from Rome al hoot. Brimful 
A voys he hadde as smal as hath a goot. 
But of his craft, fro Berwyk unto Ware 
Ne was ther swich another pardoner. 
For in his male he hadde a pilwe-beer, bag— pillow-case 
Which that, he seyde, was oure lady veyl ; lady's 

He seyde he hadde a gobet of the seyl piece 

That Sei'nt Peter hadde, whan that he wente 
Upon the see, til Jhesu Crist hym hente. 
He hadde a croys of latoun, ful of stones, cross of brass 
And in a glas he hadde pigges bones. 
But with thise relikes, whan that he fond found 

A poure person dwellynge upon lond. 
Upon a day he gat hym moore moneye 
Than that the person gat in monthes tweye ; 
And thus with feyned flaterye and japes 
He made the person and the peple his apes. 
But, trewely to tellen atte laste. 
He was in chirche a noble ecclesiaste ; 
Wei koude he rede a lessoun or a storie, 
But alderbest he song an Offertorie ; best of all 

For wel he wiste, whan that song was songe. 
He moste preche, and wel affile his tonge polish 

To Wynne silver, as he ful wel koude ; 
Therefore he song the murierly and loude. more merrily 
{Cunterbury Tales, Prologue, 11. 669-714-) 

1 That is, with the Summoner. 2 i^ shreds, lock by lock 
3 Dishevelled, with his hair loose. ^ Copy of the supposed imprint 
of Christ's face on the handkerchief of St Veronica, which the 
Pardoner might have seen at Rome. 



40 

From the Tales themselves we have already 
quoted an example of Chaucer's chivalrous style ; 
our second extract exhibits him where he is per- 
haps at his strongest of all — as the teller of tales of 
low life, tales of which he can only have received 
from others the mere outline, while his expansions 
of them are full of humour and individuality. As 
to the stories of this class, Chaucer himself ad- 
vised some of his readers to ' choose another page,' 
and the folk- story of the * Fox and Hen 'assigned to 
the Nonnes Prest is the only one of them which 
can be recommended virginibiis puerisquej but 
this incident from the * Reeves Tale,' of how a 
knavish miller frustrated the device of the two 
Cambridge clerks to prevent him from stealing 
their corn, stands by itself, and is altogether 
delightful. The clerks, it should be said, are 
northerners, and speak in the northern dialect. 
Symond is the miller : 

* Symond,' quod John, * by God, nede has na peer, 
Hym boes serve hymself that has na swayn, i, 2 

Or elles he is a fool, as clerkes sayn. 
Our manciple I hope he will be deed expect 

Swa werkes ay the wanges in his heed ; 3, 4, 5, 6 

And forthy is I come and eek Alayn. therefore 

To grynde oure corn and carie it ham agayn. home 

I pray yow spede us heythen that ye may. ' hence 

' It shal be doon,' quod Symkyn, * by my fay ! 
What wol ye doon, whil that it is in hande ?' 

* By God, right by the hopur wil I stande,' hopper 
Quod John, * and se how that the corn gas in. goes 

Yet saugh I never, by my fader kyn. 
How that the hopur wagges til and fra.' to and fro 

Aleyn answerde, 'John, and wiltow swa? 
Thanne wil I be bynethe, by my croun ! 
And se how that the mele falles doun 
Into the trough, — that sal be my disport ; 
For, John, y-faith, I may been of youre sort, 
I is as ille a millere as are ye.' 

This millere smyled of hir nycetee, foolishness 

And thoghte, ' Al this nys doon but for a wyle ; 7 

They wene that no man may hem bigile ; 



41 

But by my thrift yet shal I blere hir eye, cheat them 

For al the sleighte in hir philosophye. 

The more queynte crekes that they make, cunning devices 

The more wol I stele whan I take. 

In stide of flour yet wol I yeve hem bren ; bran 

The gretteste clerkes been noght wisest men, 

As whilom to the wolf thus spak the mare ; 8 

Of al hir art ne couhte I noght a tare.' 

Out at the dore he gooth ful pryvely, 
Whan that he saugh his tyme softely. 
He looketh up and doun til he hath founde 
The clerkes hors, ther as it stood y-bounde. 
Bihynde the mille, under a levesel, bower 

And to the hors he goth hym faire and wel ; 
He strepeth of the brydel right anon, strips off 

And whan the hors' was laus, he gynneth gon 9, 10 

Toward the fen, ther wilde mares renne, — run 

Forth with ' Wehee ! ' thurgh thikke and thurgh thenne. 

This millere goth agayn, no word he seyde, 
But doth his note and with the clerkes pleyde, business 
Til that hir corn was faire and wel y-grounde ; 
And whan the.mele is sakked and y-bounde, 
This John goth out, and fynt his hors away, findeth 

And gan to crie, ' Harrow !' and, * Weyl-away ! 
Oure hors is lorn ; Alayn, for Goddes banes bones 

Stepe on thy feet ; com out, man, al atanes ! at once 
Alias, our wardeyn has his palfrey lorn !' 
This Aleyn al forgat bothe mele and corn ; 
Al was out of his mynde his housbondrie. 
' What, whilk way is he geen ? ' he gan to crie. 

The wyf cam lepynge inward with a ren ; 
She seyde, ' Alias, youre hors goth to the fen 
With wilde mares, as faste as he may go ; 
Unthank come on his hand that boond hym so, 
And he that bettre sholde han knyt the reyne ! ' 

' Alias,' quod John, ' Aleyn, for Cristes peyne. 
Lay doun thy swerd, and I wil myn alswa. also 

I is ful wight, God waat, as is a raa ; u 

By Goddes herte ! he sal nat scape us bathe. both 

Why nadstow pit the capul in the lathe ? 12 

Il-hayl, by God, Aleyn, thou is a fonne.' Ill-luck— fool 

Thise sely clerkes han ful faste y-ronne innocent 

Toward the fen, bothe Aleyn and eek John ; 
And whan the millere saugh that they were gon. 



42 

He half a busshel of hir flour hath take, 

And bad his wyf go knede it in a cake. 

He seyde, * I trowe the clerkes were aferd r 

Yet kan a millere make a clerkes herd, befool 

For al his art ; now lat hem goon hir weye ! 

Lo wher they goon ; ye, lat the children pleye ; 

They gete hym nat so lightly, by my croun ! ' 

(* Reeves Tale,' Canterbury Tales, A. 4026-4099.) 

1 Behoves. 2 No servant. ^ go. 4 (Northern plural) work. 
5 Cheek-teeth. ^ Head. ^ is only done for a trick. ^ gee ' Rey- 
nard the Fox.' 9 Loose, i*^ Begins to go. 11 I am full swift, God 
knows, as is a roe. 12 Why didn't you put the palfrey in the stable? 

Lastly, as a contrast to these broad humours, 
here from the * Prioresses Tale ' is a return to 
Chaucer's earlier manner of tenderness and devo- 
tion, no less graceful and pleasing than of yore, and 
written with far greater mastery. The legend is one 
of many which good men — Heaven forgive them ! — 
all over Europe sincerely believed, of a little Chris- 
tian boy wantonly murdered by the Jews : 

A litel scole of cristen folk ther stood 
Doun at the ferther ende, in which ther were 
Children an heepe, y-comen of Cristen blood, 
That lerned in that scole yeer by yere 
Swich manere doctrine as men used there, — 
This is to seyn, to syngen, and to rede. 
As smale children doon in hire childhede. 

Among thise children was a wydwes sone, 

A litel clergeoun, seven yeer of age, chorister 

That day by day to scole was his wone ; wont 

And eek also, where as he saugh thymage saw the image 

Of Cristes mooder, he hadde in usage. 

As hym was taught, to knele adoun and seye 

His Ave Marie, as he goth by the weye. 

Thus hath this wydwe hir litel sone y-taught 

Oure blisful lady, Cristes mooder deere, 

To worshipe ay, and he forgate it naught. 

For sely child wol alday soone leere, — i, 2, 3 

But ay whan I remembre on this mateere, 



43 

Seint Nicholas stant ever in my presenv. 
For he so yong to Crist dide reverence. 

This litel child his litel book lernynge, 
As he sat in the scole at his prymer. 
He Alma redemptoris herde synge, 
As children lerned hire antiphoner ; 
And, as he dorste, he drough hym ner and ner, 5 

And herkned ay the wordes and the note, 
Til he the firste vers koude al by rote. 

Noght wiste he what this Latyn was to seye, 

For he so yong and tendre was of age ; 

But on a day his felawe gan he preye 

Texpounden hym this song in his langage, 

Or telle him why, this song was in usage ; 

This preyde he hym to construe and declare 

Ful often time upon his knowes bare. knee 

His felawe, which that elder was than he, 
Answerde hym thus : * This song I have herd seye 
Was maked of oure blisfiil lady free, noble 

Hire to salue, and eek hire for to preye salute 

To been oure help and socour whan we deye : 
I kan na moore expounde in this mateere, 
I lerne song, I kan but smal grammeere.' know but little 

* And is this song maked in reverence 
Of Cristes mooder ? ' seyde this innocent. 
* Now certes, I wol do my diligence 
To konne it al, er Cristemasse is went, 
Though that I for my prymer shal be shent, scolded 

And shal be beten thries in an houre, thrice 

I wol it konne oure lady for to honoure ! ' 

His felawe taughte hym homward prively 
Fro day to day, til he koude it by rote. 
And thanne he song it wel and boldely 
Fro word to word, acordynge with the note. 
Twies a day it passed thurgh his throte, Twice 

To scoleward and homward whan he wente ; 
On Cristes mooder set was his entente. 

('Prioresses Tale,' Canterbury Tales^ B. 1685-1740.) 

^ Innocent. 2 Always. ^ Learn. * While at his mother's breast. 
^ Drew hinm nearer and nearer. 



44 

3 prose it is sufficient to say that, 

could write with ease and simplicity 

nis guard, in his attempts at more ornate 

xie never attained to the artistic mastery 

n everywhere marks his verse. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 999 027 4f 



Lore. 



